All About Nexus WordPress Theme – A Review

Many blog owners have utilized the power of WordPress as their blogging platform. As one of the world’s most-popular open source content management systems, there are thousands upon thousands of themes to choose from. Thankfully, there are WordPress theme categories that make the search a little bit easier. A modern theme category is the Magazine layout; perfect for content first approach blog or website.

Not only does it look tremendous and provide an overall great user experience, but it is also pretty easy to set up and use.

Below I’ve outlined some of the main features of the Nexus theme, how to get going with it, and some of the minor roadblocks you may hit while setting it up.

Nexus Theme – Review & Features

Perhaps the most appealing part of this theme is the aesthetics of it. It is sleek but organized; colorful but not over dramatic. Beyond that though, it does come with some pretty powerful features. If you don’t believe me, check out this demo yourself.

Home Page Builder

The Home Page Builder built into the Nexus theme takes a very simple approach to drag and drop page design, but it still gives you powerful control over the look and layout of your home page. I’ll be showing you how to configure that in the next part of this post.

Responsive Design and Page Templates

Since over half the world browse the web on a mobile device, having a website that is responsive to those screen sizes is imperative.

Another great feature is the static page templates that come with Nexus. Like all Elegant Themes, Nexus comes with multiple page templates to help you build both relevant and engaging pages.

These are the templates that Nexus comes with:

Full-width

Blog

Contact

Gallery

Portfolio (with multiple layout options)

Login

Search

Sitemap

Adding a Sitemap to your website is important as it provides a better user experience and helps the search engines categorize things on your site. Therefore, having that as a page template option is always a delicate touch.

Photo Header In Blog Posts

One of my favorite features with this theme is the full-width picture header at the top of every blog post.

This puts your featured image at the fore of your blog post and provides an excellent visual for your viewers. However, when you set up your featured image for your post you’ll need to make sure you set the image to “Full Size”, or your picture will turn out blurry. (Tip: High-res photo is remarkable too!)

Change Colors, Fonts And More Using WordPress Theme Customizer

The last feature that I wanted to make note of is how you can use the WordPress Theme Customizer to make some of the other visual changes to your site.

Using the Customizer allows you to make tweaks to things like color, fonts, adding widgets ECT. Just a few clicks of the button and you are ready to go!

Exploring The Back-end

Even though the features of any theme may seem stunning, the real test comes when exploring the back-end of the theme.

Thankfully, all the themes by Elegant Themes are easy to navigate and setup using the ePanel.

After you upload and activate your Nexus theme, you can make certain changes in your ePanel to boost the functionality and look of your site.

ePanel

To find the ePanel, simply navigate over to Appearance and then Nexus Theme Options in the sidebar of your WordPress Dashboard.

In General Settings of the ePanel, you can quickly upload a logo, favicon and header image to your site – if you so choose. Similarly, In the demo on Elegant Themes for Nexus, the theme displays a block style layout for featured posts on the homepage.

To enable or disable this, you’ll need to navigate to the top most tabs of the ePanel and click on “Featured Posts”. Then enable or disable the function here, and select the category that you will like to display.

Ad Management

The Nexus theme also comes with areas where you can integrate Ads into your theme. If you’d like to utilize those, you need to go to Ad Management in your ePanel and chose which ones to enable. After that, you’ll need to upload the banner(s) and save your changes.

Integration

Adding the tracking code with Google Analytics is pretty easy with the Nexus theme as well.

Simply grab the necessary code from your Google Analytics account, back into Nexus Theme Options, and then down to Integration.

Now paste the code into the area that mentions Google Analytics, save it, and you are good to go!

Featured Posts On Category Pages

The theme demo also shows a similar layout similar to that on the homepage (featured posts on the home page) on the Category Pages. Using this can help create some unification in your design.

Getting that set up isn’t as straight-forward as it is with the homepage, but it is still pretty easy. All you have to do is to turn the posts you want displayed into “sticky posts”.

You can do this by navigating to the “Posts” area of your dashboard and click on the Quick Edit option under the post name.

From those options, you can select the option to make your post sticky. After you update that post, you will now find it featured on your category page.

Tah-dah!

Using The Homepage Builder

After you’ve configured your Featured Posts on the Homepage, you can easily set up the design of the rest of the page using the Nexus Homepage Builder in the Appearance Options.

You have four modules to choose from:

Recent Posts

Popular Posts

Recent Reviews

Add Recent Posts from Several Categories

Click the module that you want to display, select the Category that you want, and then choose the number of posts that you’d like that module to show.

Once you’ve added all the modules that you want on your homepage, you can drag and drop them and rearrange the layout until you are happy with things.

Price And Final Thoughts

Pricing of Nexus is actually an unusual deal. The price for the theme starts at $69, but that is not a great part. A great part of that price is that for $69 you get, not only Nexus, but all the themes available at Elegant Themes. How great is that!

Besides, a developer license for $89 also gives unlimited access to plugins directory as well.

Nexus is a great magazine style theme and the fact that it belongs to an established WordPress theme shop like Elegant Themes is a bonus. The homepage builder is pretty simple and easy to use which makes it perfect for someone with no knowledge of drag and drop system.

If you are also looking for a magazine theme that has an eye-catching layout and easy to use back-end with powerful features, then I suggest seriously considering Nexus.